If Tom Allen weren’t already hosting a primetime Saturday night TV show, you’d have to invent one for him. Thirteen years a standup, the Bromley man deploys a similar old-school, unthreatening camp and faux-imperious manner that Larry Grayson brought to The Generation Game. It’s a crowdpleasing combination and Allen wears it as elegantly as his soigné three-piece tweed suit. Now a host (one of several) on BBC1’s new prank-the-public gameshow Ready or Not, Allen is still touring his 2017 show Absolutely, itself a well-honed nugget of light entertainment and now running for a fortnight at Soho theatre, before another series of dates in July.
You leave wholly persuaded by Allen’s skills as an entertainer – even if he sometimes has to flog them hard to sell so-so material. He starts by setting out his stall. A chat with punters in the front row establishes his quick wit and his egoism; he feigns exhaustion with talking about anything but himself. He gives an account of his stage manner: posh voice but coarse background, and unapologetically fey. “I’ve finally made it as a gay stereotype!” There’s nothing simpering about Allen, mind you: he practically barks the opening 10 minutes of material and throughout, his voice is deployed – now singsong, now stentorian – very adroitly as a comic instrument.
There’s no theme to the show, nor much to bind together its observational humour, nostalgia trips and autobiographical snapshots of Allen’s life – cautiously dating, learning to drive, living awkwardly with mum and dad. His signature trick is the non-stop rant. Three separate routines (about schoolteaching, kids’ birthday parties, and hen parties) are delivered in the same grandstanding manner, escalating in intensity as Allen heaps indignity upon indignity, barely pausing for breath. I found them a bit too conspicuous as set-pieces, too engineered to win applause for the fury of their delivery over the quality of the content.
There is some good content, mind you. In the children’s party section, one neat image describes tenpin bowling balls being “vomited from the floor”, and another finds a high-strung, cake-toting mum squawking “HAAA- HAAA- HAAA-” over and again until the guests join in with that old familiar song. He wrings some fine laughs from straight couples’ banal love lives on a visit to Pizza Express. And his snobbery is converted into hard comic currency when confronted with a “beige” buffet on a hen do, the nadir of which (“barbecue Hula Hoops!”) all but deprives him – very amusingly – of the power of speech.
That’s a rare deviation from the standard mode of witty diatribe; another finds Allen in character as the underused vocalist on a dance music track. I welcomed the respite from his observational material, with its coercive use of the second person (“You would do this, wouldn’t you?”). Other sections don’t develop far beyond the laughter of recognition: when Allen mentions that hen parties tend to be organised via WhatsApp groups, he practically gets a round of applause. And to the cheerful gay stereotyping, he adds working-class stereotyping too, as he visits Bluewater shopping centre with his macho dad and debates immigration with his parents’ friends.
Clearly, overturning received wisdom is not what Allen is here for. And that’s fine: he gives us lots to enjoy in this upbeat and likable show. There’s some sharp badinage, sympathetic personal material and – not least – his abundant skills as a raconteur and host.
• Tom Allen: Absolutely is at Soho theatre, London, until 21 April, then 11-21 July. Box office: 020-7478 0100.
